This week, Toronto Public Health warned that a young adult in the city had the measles, after getting it while travelling. These stories are no longer uncommon; there have been outbreaks of measles in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario in recent years. One, in Quebec, hadmore than 100 cases.

One reason is because Canada’s vaccination rates are too low. Eighty nine percent of toddlers have been vaccinated for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) as well as meningococcal diseases, and 91 percent have gotten the polio vaccine. Vaccinations for diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus and chickenpox are lower, with rates in the 70th percentiles. That’s well below the 90 percent needed for herd immunity – where enough children are vaccinated to protect the whole community, including those with allergies or immune conditions that mean they can’t be vaccinated.And even MMR rates differ across the country, so there are pockets with much lower vaccination rates: Most schools in Vancouver have vaccination rates that aretoo low for herd immunity, with some as low as 15 percent.

Every new vaccination story seems to be used as an opportunity to rail against anti-vaxxers, who are spoken about with the same disdain as flat earthers. Heated debates and pleas to vaccinate are happening everywhere from Facebook to the doctor’s office – but most of those conversations don’t change people’s minds.

Vilifying people who don’t vaccinate doesn’t help the situation, says Joshua Greenberg, director of the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University and a researcher in this field. Nor does acting like they’re dumb or misinformed. “One of the misperceptions is that people don’t get their kids immunized because they simply don’t understand,” he says. But people who don’t vaccinate are often more educated than the general public, and better off as well.

The good news is that researchers like Greenberg are looking into how to best talk to people who are reluctant to vaccinate their kids. Though we don’t have definite answers yet, they have unearthed some promising strategies. Here are seven of those techniques.

1. Stop thinking of all people who don’t vaccinate as anti-vaxxers

“The anti-vaxxer is a specter,” says Greenberg. “It’s character in a narrative. We often inflate the degree of that problem.” Instead, researchers separate them into two groups: anti-vaxxers, who make up 1 to 3 percent of the population, and the vaccine hesitant, a category up to 30 percent of Canadians fall into. Anti-vaxxers are very hard, if not impossible, to convince, but the vaccine hesitant do seem to change their minds.

A study led by Greenberg looked at the attitudes of 1,000 Canadians, and found that while 92 percent thought that vaccines were safe and effective, many of them also had concerns. Twenty-seven percent worried that vaccines might cause serious harm to their children, and 33 percent thought that the pharmaceutical industry was responsible for a push towards mandatory vaccination. Twenty-eight percent were worried about a link between autism and vaccines, despite the fact that any link has been disproved.

2. Keep cognitive biases in mind

Worries around the safety of vaccines have existedas long as vaccines themselves, but much of the recent rise in anti-vaccination sentiment can be traced toa study in the Lancet by Andrew Wakefield that connected autism and the MMR vaccine. That research has now been thoroughly debunked – in 2010, the Lancetissued a retraction on Wakefield’s paper, and he lost his medical licence – but once an idea takes hold, it’s difficult to get rid of it.

That’s because your brain is terrible at processing complex information and rare, emotionally-loaded risks, like a serious adverse reaction to a vaccine. Instead, the brain relies oncognitive biases – shortcuts in how we perceive information. For vaccine hesitancy, we can blame confirmation bias – the tendency to only accept facts that fit our existing beliefs; illusion or explanatory depth bias, which makes us believe that we know more about a subject than we do; and causal illusions, which encourage us to see cause-and-effect where there is none, like between getting a MMR shot and the early signs of autism, which both happen at the same age.

3. Call out distortions in the science

Francesca, a new mom in Toronto, met with her doctor three times to discuss her hesitancy around vaccinating her child. Despite that, he “did not accomplish anything in answering questions I had,” she says. “His words were ‘as of right now there is nothing wrong with these vaccinations.’ To me, they said that about smoking at one time. It’s not good enough to me.” Needless to say, he didn’t change her mind.

Her story is similar to that of other parents we spoke to who had refused to vaccinate their children. They said what would be convincing to them was better scientific evidence. One said: “Until science can definitively prove vaccines are safe … [public relations] won’t sway anyone who has actually researched the safety of vaccines.”

Of course, that science exists. But it’s easily distorted. “There are some very common techniques that science deniers use [and parents absorb],” says Cornelia Betsch, a German psychologist who studies why people choose not to vaccinate. “One is false expectations – they demand 100 percent safety, and nothing on earth is 100 percent safe. They also cherry pick: some anti-vaccination people collect evidence from studies, they pick certain things out of the limitation sections of the studies, and they don’t put that into the context. And they omit the big consensus on the research.”A review by Betsch looked at the messaging side of thing and found that when faced with arguments like these, calling out these techniques can be helpful.

Emphasizing the scientific consensus also seems to help. Arandomized trial found that telling people that “90 percent of medical scientists agree that vaccines are safe and that all parents should be required to vaccinate their children” significantly reduced their worries about vaccines and belief in a link between vaccines and autism.

4. Work with confirmation bias instead of against it

Explaining how herd immunity works increases people’s willingness to vaccinate. “It adds some extra value,” says Betsch. “If you know about the individual benefits, you should also learn about the social benefits.”

There’s also some evidence that emphasizing the negative impacts of the diseases, instead of the safety of vaccines, might work. A 2015 study found that showing parents pictures of children suffering from mumps, measles or rubella and a parent’s description of a child’s illness worked better than sharing information debunking the idea that vaccines aren’t safe. Derek Powell, one of the authors of that study and a PhD student at the University of California, Los Angeles, explains that it might work because “if you’re skeptical of vaccines, we’re kind of arguing with you if we talk about vaccine safety. But diseases being dangerous basically fits with what you already think.”

The success of that study goes against the results of a2014 randomized trial that tested four different ways of promoting the MMR vaccine: offering information explaining that there’s no evidence the MMR vaccine causes autism; information about the dangers of the diseases; photos of children who had measles, mumps or rubella; and a story about an infant who almost died of measles. It found that none of the interventions made parents more likely to vaccinate, and in rare cases, offering evidence about the harms of diseases actually increased beliefs in the side-effects of vaccines – possibly because it put parents in a fearful state of mind.

5. Think about telling real people’s stories

The idea of using personal stories to convince parents is also controversial in scientific circles. After all, if you fight anecdote with anecdote, don’t you lose the upper hand? And even if you do, is it the role of doctors to scare people into action? As Betsch says, “You should really make a decision: do you want to inform people, or persuade them? Usually, health organizations want to inform people and take it seriously that it’s a free decision.”

But Greenberg argues it’s necessary. “Physicians and public health scientists tend to work in a world of statistics, but statistics on their own aren’t particularly compelling. Narratives are the ways in which we have communicated about risk from the very beginning, and stories are the way in which we make sense of the world. We need to find a balance between stories and the evidence.”

6. Change the default

If parents are confused about the evidence, a common reaction is to choose to do nothing. (We can blame another bias for that – the omission bias, which gives us the feeling that harm that comes from an action is worse than harm that comes from inaction.) One response, then can be as simple as having doctors use language that assumes patients are going to vaccinate instead of asking if they will.

Another is to make it harder not to vaccinate. States that make it harder to get exemptions to vaccinations for school attendance havesignificantly fewer parents opt-out than those that don’t. That’s being adopted in Canada, too: Ontario’s Health Minister has tabled legislation that would require parents to take an educational class before being allowed to opt-out of vaccinating. And Manitoba, Ontario and New Brunswick have enacted legislation that requires children to be immunized before attending public school.

7. Tailor the message to build trust

Health care professionals play a key role here: asystematic review that looked at how doctors should talk to their patients about vaccines suggested a tailored approach is important, given that there isn’t enough evidence to know exactly what kind of messages resonate with patients.

The Canadian Pediatric Society’s guidelines around this suggest how to do that in practice. It suggests physicians start with motivational interviewing (MI), a method that’s used to discuss the parents’ concerns in a non-judgmental way and to isolate a parent’s exact concerns. The technique begins with having health care professionals gauge where parents are in their decision-making process and what their specific concerns are. If someone has few concerns, they might be addressed on the spot. But a parent who is very hesitant might respond better to just getting information and time to reflect ahead of any decision.

The technique, which is commonly used to get patients to accept treatment for alcohol abuse, was first researched on vaccines by Arnaud Gagneur, a doctor and professor at Quebec’s Universite de Sherbrooke. His study involved doing motivational interviewing sessions in the maternity wing at a hospital.“The research assistant [did the interviews] and gave information, but using MI techniques: we ask a lot of questions of the parents, then give answers that are adapted to the questions and position of the parents,” he explains.

The meetings took about 20 minutes, and they included 3,300 families in total. Those parents were 15 percent more likely to say they would vaccinate their babies at two months old, and 9 percent more likely to have completed their scheduled vaccinations when their kids were two years old. (This research hasn’t yet been published.) Gagneur is now testing that approach in pilots across the country, and it’s being introduced in all major maternity wards throughout Quebec at the beginning of 2018.

Part of the reason motivational interviewing is successful, he says, is that parents like it, especially vaccine hesitant ones. “They say, it’s the first time that I feel respected about my position with vaccination, this is the first time someone has spoken to me like this,” he says. “One mother [who had just given birth to her third child] said to the research assistant after the intervention, okay, I’m going to vaccinate my child,and all of my other children as well. It’s the first time that I’ve had a discussion like this, and I feel respected, and I trust you.”

Enter the debate: reply to an existing comment

92 comments

Don TaylorAugust 31st, 2017 at 1:31 pm

A succinct synopsis of the issues and solutions. Perhaps you could add a # 8: “When communicating (verbal and written) with your patients and their significant others, avoid medical jargon”. Many people find it difficult to understand, especially those for whom English is a 2nd language. Medical practitioners are improving in this area, but still a work in process.

Blah blah blah. How about finally telling the truth about medieval chemical injections OR have a live televised debate on the topic from both sides. If protecting the vaccinated from the unvaccinated is sooooo important you will not have a problem with the latter.

It’s actually more about protecting children who cannot be or haven’t yet been vaccinated. Some vaccines, like the MMR, use attenuated virus (think of a dog vs. a wolf) but children with immune deficiencies can’t take those and rely on herd immunity.

So these children need to stay away from anyone recently vaccinated with a live virus vaccine due to viral shedding. Notice that cancer wards have signs at the entrance forbidding anyone who has been recently vaccinated with a live virus vaccine from entering. What does this tell you? Vaccines spread diseases.

As someone who is immunocompromised, I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone else. Vaccines have been shown to suppress and debilitate to the immune system. Please don’t use people like me as an excuse for medical tyranny under the false pretence of herd immunity which has been disproven. I do not feel safer. If anything, people like me are at risk of getting sick from those who are shedding viruses from vaccines. Second, mandatory vaccination will actually make it next to impossible for me to get the exemption I require as someone with an immune deficiency.

I agree. A live debate on TV. NO script for the presenter. Media are all funded by Big Pharma. So, bring in an outsider for the moderator, if you can find one?Hard to find anyone who does not have a dog in this race though… This will never happen however, because those who work for Big Pharma, do not want to be embarrassed by those who do actually have the evidence, that the Big Pharma peeps do not want the public to see.

I am with the Italian approach – vaccinate! When seat belts were made mandatory, after studies demonstrated that they were safe and effective, people stopped questioning and put on seat belts. They still do.

I agree… it is battery. Uninformed consent is unlawful.. period. ‘Tailor the message,’ a desperate strategy made up by desperate people, who realise that the global consumer is waking up, literate and discerning. No longer content to be a lab rat for the vaccine industry. It might work for the oganisations that experiment in Third World countries, but it won’t work in developed countries.. although to be frank, it is happening, just with peoples’ consent.

How many babies and toddlers have died from putting on a seat belt? How many got autoimmune diseases, seizures, brain damage, the disease itself, life threatening allergies, ADD and other learning disabilities, etc? Read the inserts that come with the vials not a printout with the sales slogan “safe & effective”. Read VAERS, read The US Vaccine Injury Court reports. Listen to a few of the thousands of parents, some Drs and scientists, tell their life changing reactions their children had to vaccines. Educate yourself, your child’s life may depend on it. You can’t tell an older person who lived without vaccines that without 69 doses of neurotoxins (aluminium and mercury), fetal cells, bovine serum, sorbate80, etc that they will die if they don’t get injected because they know better. Mumps, measles were considered harmless childhood diseases and we know it by experience. In the 80s children received 10 vaccines, they have long since worn off if they even took. Measles if antibodies were created at a cost to health lasts 10-12 years according to the CDC. That leaves millions that haven’t been in this theoretical herd pack for decades. Where are the deadly epidemics? A few cases of measles, many fully vaccinated, is not worth mentioning. What happened to H1N1? The UK paid out 90 million to children injured by that vaccine. What happened to the Zika virus? It’s fear mongering. It’s all orchestrated by the pharmaceutical industry for sales and to boost their billion $ profits. The children have never been sicker. The US vaccinates more than any other developed country and has the highest infant mortality rates, Canada very close to the same numbers.

Show me instances where people were injured and even killed because they used their seat belt and I’ll show you thousands upon thousands of children who have been injured and even killed because of vaccines.

Then why, when it comes to vaccines, have people NOT stopped questioning and moreover, are increasingly CHALLENGING vaccine mandates? It’s NOT due to the Wakefields and Kennedys. Its the Information Superhighway. Here, people can research the science, the statistics, the testimonials of vaccine victims and more, or just rely on their own personal vaccine injury experiences – and of course, there’s word of mouth. The Italian approach, eh? Io non parlo Italiano!!!

There will never be a “national debate” about immunisation. Or whether we should wear seat belts in cars, or have fences around swimming pools. The antivaxxers say ” I’m not anti vaccine ” so as to be taken seriously but then can’t help themselves and spout the usual crap from the gang of twelve: Wakefield, Tenpenny, Robert Kennedy Jr, Suzanne Humphries , the lovely Tetyana,etc. In Australia,until conscientious objection (aka belief system) was removed as an excuse for parents to deny immunisation to their children, the rate for same was 1.8 percent of families. It has since fallen and immunisation rates are rising. There will always be a fringe group who have a fixed belief system and resources are thankfully now being directed to the 5 percent of families whose kids are unimmunised due to ignorance or apathy or lack of access. Meanwhile more and more states in Australia and Around the world are mandating immunisation for attendance at child care so really the ant-vax crowd are losing the fight.

Which gang are you in Chris? How about you bring yourself up to date with the American CDC booster schedule before you go off harping about the ‘unvaccinated”. I bet you $10,000 that you are actually not weight equivalent vaccinated. If you and the ‘health practitioner’ nominated are willing to subject yourselves to the same vaccines that are being mandated for children then I will happily pay up.

keep believing that and you can keep sleeping at night…. sadly parents with vaccine inured children are not afforded that luxury. 24/7 care… unassisted and abused by people who write as you have done. Try finding your moral compass next time your are at your computer, instead of denigrating and attempting to marginalise those who do actually read the clinical trials, have a vaccine inured family member, or has lost someone and been told it was just a coincidence.

Mandate is loosing your freedom to your own body and deciding for your own children! When 95% of the children were getting the measles, there was naturally herd immunity! Acces to clean water, healthy food should be of our concern. Nature gave us free herd immunity, now vaccinating cost society incredible amounts of money which is also earned by major companies who are not concerned at all with your health, just with profit….!!! It is also the only medical procedure for healthy people and believe me no medical procedure is without risks!

Bulldust. LAVVs (Live Attenuated Virus Vaccines) include Polio, Influenza B, MMR and a host of others. Yes, that’s LIVE VIRUS. “Attenuated” sounds good on paper, but since these are mainly RNA viruses, the mutation rate when they are reproduced in the human body is staggeringly high. They DO NOT STAY ATTENUATED. THEY MUTATE. Basically, vaccinated people are disease carriers, which means that whether or not they, themselves are affected directly by the LIVE DISEASE they are given by injection, they are the ones to whom anyone should look when there is an outbreak. There are emerging statistics and independent studies not controlled by the pharmaceutical corporations and these are increasing in number. They even appear to be exponentiating and with the Internet phenomenon, Big Pharma can no longer control the bad publicity they are getting from these studies. The victims of vaccines are numberless. There are too many of them. But the days of the vaccine are NUMBERED.

A lot of volatile passion is all I get when I see pro-vaccine or anti-vaccination comments. It’s hard to listen to someone who is yelling all the time. It automatically makes one defensive. Not very productive of either side.

Excellent article, thanks for the overview on cognitive and omission biases and suggestions to address through working with confirmation bias, adding narratives to statistic/ evidence driven risk communication(s) and CPS recommendations for Motivational Interviewing (MI). Have used a few of these techniques in practice and find very beneficial to the patient-HCP relationship.

If you’re serious and sincere about using narratives, be sure to listen to a few of the narratives of doctors who have educated themselves after seeing their own vaccinated patients develop regressive autism or die suddenly following routine vaccinations. Most “anti-vaxxers” were once highly motivated vaccine adherents who trusted people like you, were not given a true “informed consent,” didn’t know that the ingredients have not been safety-tested, and that there “acquired herd immunity,” even if it were possible, is completely different from the concept of natural herd immunity.

Quoting this article – “One of the misperceptions is that people don’t get their kids immunized because they simply don’t understand,” he says. But people who don’t vaccinate are often more educated than the general public, and better off as well.”

Spend a little time listening to a few of the thousands of narratives collected by the “We are Vaxxed” team. They are readily available on YouTube and FB. If you do that coupled with your own research at PubMed, or even the CDC, I hope you will have a broader picture than the narrow scope of this propagandist article offers.

agreed… people tend to wake up once their child or themselves have been vaccine injured regrettably. Then they start to read the literature, they did not know existed and hear the testimonies of others who have suffered the same outcome. They come to appreciate the true meaning of what Informed Consent involves.

The pervasive monoculture of “obey your vaccine” is dangerous and groupthink mentality that “we” can’t possibly be wrong is how every scientific and human atrocity has ever been indulged.

Most of the general public will succumb to the dogma, however as you have mentioned it is the more affluent and educated parents who step back to critically vaccination – Let’s just look at the flu vaccine for an example as to why these individuals should not trust you – The Osterholm et al ( 2012) Lancet meta analysis revealed that flu research is poorly conducted ( only 30 studies out of 33,000) were credibly conducted and there was not a SINGLE RCT to support that vaccination for influenza reduces illness, mortality and morbidity in older adults and children under 8. The Cochrane, regarded as bullet proof resources in all other matters, have said the same for years and yet they are ignored when it comes to the flu vaccine because the discourse contrasts the groupthink.
Healthcare workers are forcefully vaccinated for influenza when the DeSerres et al (2017) meta analysis eviscerated the garbage RCT’s that have been flogged to support this coercive facade for years. ( the Cochrane has again said the same thing for years) Children are targeted for flu vaccine campaigns despite a paucity of good evidence and yet the vaccine has behaved unpredictably in this vulnerable population. Febrile seizures saw the vaccine pulled in multiple countries. The adjuvanted vaccine of the 2009 season was a dangerous failure that left 1 in 55,000 European children with permanent brain damage. Canadian children were also afflicted with permanent disability. Sixty people received multimillion pound payouts from the British government after brain damage, most victims were children, 6 were healthcare workers. Cowling et al (2012) found flu vaccinated children had increased rhinovirus and coxsackie/echovirus

The delicacies of our immune system are still greatly misunderstood, yet those who pound the pulpit about the absolute “safety” of the flu vaccine proceed with reckless disregard. Osterholm says “ We have to be careful about what we are intend to accomplish” The Cochrane review on vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy adults concluded that, “Although serious harm from vaccination may be rare it cannot be ignored and conclude that the results of their literature review discourage the utilization of vaccination against influenza in healthy adults as a routine measure.”

The constant assurance that the “flu vaccine is absolutely safe” is irresponsible. No medication comes without sides effects. The flu vaccine has the largest Adjudicated pay out for vaccine injury in the United States with 70% of vaccine injury over a 6 month period. 37 out of 72 cases are guillan barre ( Report from the US Department of Justice )

Since 2009 the enigma of repeat vaccination and paradoxical vaccine reactions have been described by many researchers. Skowronski described the “Canadian phenomenon” which saw H1N1 vaccination promote influenza infections. Looks like yearly vaccinations are indeed counterproductive and the serially vaccinated are at higher risk for illness.

The flu vaccine efficacy was reported to be 80% then 60%.in reality the vaccine has not eeked about 50% in the past decade.
A scared population can be talked into anything Flu deaths are grossly exaggerated to instill fear to the public based on faulty scientific models, one year, ALL winter deaths were counted as flu deaths ( I am not kidding, see Crowe 2012 “flu death reality check” )Influenza is a minority illness during the season and Flu deaths are likely exaggerated by as much as 10x

I have presented a lot of information ( sorry) on the flaws of just ONE vaccine to illustrate why you will never regain credibility on this issue until you take off your own blinders that we have a gross lack of ideological diversity on the vaccine issue. If the government and our doctors would so blatantly misrepresent the value of this vaccine WHY the hell would any critically thinking parent NOT be suspicious?

Not going to work. The cat’s out of the bag. Parents who have done their own research know that the “scientific consensus” people are more than happy to risk other people’s children to the harms of vaccines. It’s a risk the “scientific”community is willing to take!!!! If your kid gets autism or some other neurological problem, that’s fine with them, I mean you can’t sue them so whatever!

I also love how you do your own research, that’s the funniest thing ever, you mean you googled “vaccines and autism” and found what you wanted to hear? Or did you actually do clinical studies, tested each varienr of product in a vaccine, using a double blind method and years of waiting to gather data?

Bravo! What I find so interesting is that so many who question vaccines have researched, use intelligent arguments, and do not seem to be affected by the propaganda of fear. You are a case in point. On the other hand, I find most vaccine advocates using fear, marketing ploys and false information ad nauseam. Things like adverse events only happen to one in a million children or that vaccines are not very profitable. Statements with zero credibility. That says to me that one side is pouring over information searching for truth while the other side seems to be satisfied with anything that fits inside their preconceived belief system.

Your comment was incredibly researched and intelligent. Parents deserve the truth. They are not getting it. This is why they are railing against vaccines. I haven’t heard a parent yet who mentions Andrew Wakefield as a reason for hesitancy. But they do mention a child with a vaccine injury or a family member’s child or a friend’s child. These injuries are what I believe is driving the hesitancy, which is driving the research, which is ultimately driving the decision not to vaccinate.

This article began progressively and then descended into a concerning endorsement of sanctioning the removal of constitutional entitlements to choice

Before we marginalize those with opposing voices concerning vaccination perhaps we should ACTUALLY listen?
It is a matter of public record that the American Supreme Court deemed vaccines unavoidably unsafe(https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-152.pdf) and as a result vaccine manufacturers are exempt from liability.
Furthermore, several vaccines such as the flu vaccine go to market without adequate testing – an unheard of practice that warrants public concern

Grandjean also found that mercury could threaten children’s nervous systems well into adolescence. “What we are finding out is that mercury is very parallel to lead,” Grandjean says. “Such pollutants are particularly worrisome because, once they’ve done the damage to the developing brain, the child will have to live with that for the rest of his life.”

A 2017 paper published in the Lancet (http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laneur/article/PIIS1474-4422(13)70278-3/abstract )states the following updated conclusion : To control the pandemic of developmental neurotoxicity, we propose a global prevention strategy. Untested chemicals should not be presumed to be safe to brain development, and chemicals in existing use and all new chemicals must therefore be tested for developmental neurotoxicity. To coordinate these efforts and to accelerate translation of science into prevention, we propose the urgent formation of a new international clearinghouse.

Worth thinking about ?
Or God forbid would that make you an Antivaxer? Anyone who seeks transparency and disclosure regarding vaccines is one didn’t you know ?

Yes! And yet they write articles like this one about how to tell us to just be quiet! MAYBE SOMEONE ought to just do the actual science! Of course this will not happen while certain individuals are making truckloads of money on the way it is now.

Very well said. This entire thread starting with Leslie’s points and now yours. I am not an antivaxxer, I am an ex-vaxxer. After being personally harmed and seeing our son harmed, I began researching. And that folks is what really scares everyone. Because vaccine research is a Pandora’s box that cannot be closed. Open it for yourself. Go on. I dare you. Anyone who wants to understand the research, can. If there is any actual desire to learn the truth, it is easy to find. I dare you. Open the box

Let’s convince people of a myth so they can inject aluminum, MSG, etc. into their newborn babies on behalf of Merck, Pfizer, Baxter, and GSK’s bottom line because they just want to help people be heathy and eradicate disease along with their billions in annual profit and blank government cheques.

As long as Canada remains the only G7 country that doesn’t compensate vaccine injuries, how do you honestly expect to build trust.

As long as there continues to be not a single study to compare overall long term overall health outcomes between only fully vaccinated and never vaccinated individuals (IOM, 2013), how can you expect parents to believe you when you lie and say vaccinating results in overall healthier adults?

1. Parents are becoming aware that their are risks to vaccines higher then the diseases themselves. Autism is a risk if you read vaccine inserts it is written by the CDC on the insert so how it’s been debunked is mind blowing when they even claim it to Be a risk.

2. Anti vaxxers are ex vaxxers who have witnessed their children or themselves experience an adverse reaction to these awful things.

3. How do you know that the kids win autoimmune problems have autoimmune problems until after you’ve given the shots ?! They are injected at Day 1 of birth with no testing to see if they should even have them or are allergic to anything in them.

4. I think it’s sad you pray on the weak to try and convince them how amazing these things are they aren’t good they don’t do what they say. 1 in 68 kids get autism that number is skyrocketing and the change to adtribute to that is the increase in vaccines … Infant mortality rate is insanely high. The flu vaccine kills something like 25,000 Canadians a year..

Wake up people population control at its finest creating sick people for money and greed … we live in a sick twisted world if you can read grab a vaccine insert and then make informed decisions on what you want to put in your body and your kids bodies .. I choose life

The only way I will change my mind. Is when the ingredients posted on cdc’s website changes as well. My son will not be injected with mercury,aluminum,formaldehyde. I can go on. But that toxic shit has no place in his body or anyone else. Stop brainwashing and pushing your garbage on people.

#1, Most “anti-vaxxers” were once pro-vaccine. Then they witnessed the damage. You’re not going to change the mind of a parent of a child with vaccine injuries. Vaccine “hesitant” is just a term that doctors use to avoid calling someone an “anti-vaxxer.” The label you give people who have researched vaccines and decided not to inject their children or themselves is irrelevant. Call me anything you want, it won’t change my mind. #2, Autism is only ONE of the possible damaging effects of vaccines. Wakefield has very-little to do with why people refuse to inject known toxins into their children. That is just something ignorant pro-vaccine like to use as a scape goat instead of actually doing any research. #3, Distortions in the science? Science is facts if a fact is distorted it’s a lie. If there is a risk, then the parent should be choosing which risk is more concerning to them. That is medical autonomy. The government does not own the people. The National CHildren’s Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 says that vaccines are unavoidably unsafe and the government chose to protect the manufacturer’s, health care workers from liability. Why should anyone be forced to use a product they know is unsafe, and they are not liable for damages? #4, Herd immunity? Immune systems are for personal use only. My immune system is not going to say to the guy next to me, I see you’ve been exposed to measles. Here are some antibodies to help you out. This is basic science. Vaccinated does not mean immune. It use to take ONE measles shot to be considered “immune” to measles. At the moment they are saying it takes two, but there are so many outbreaks in vaccinated people, they are saying well, maybe it’s three. They now are giving FIVE doses of Dtap. Why? Because the vaccine is not developing immunity. In the 50’s fully vaccinated was five doses of vaccines, now it is over 70. There are over 270 vaccines being tested. How many will it take to be fully vaccinated (does not equal immune) in 10 years? #5 Real stories : #vaxxed #wedid #regret #6, Parents are NOT confused. They are learning the truth about vaccines. They aren’t being lemmings and following the previous guy off the cliff. The government does not own the people. The people have medical autonomy, the right to informed consent and the right to refuse treatment. They also have religious freedom, and vaccines are made using things that violate the personal conscience. (Aborted fetal tissues, animal tissues- pig, dog, cow, hamster, monkey, just to name a few.) #7 Trust? You want me to trust the doctor when the doctor hasn’t even studied vaccines in medical school? When he has no idea what adverse reactions to vaccines are? When he doesn’t even know what is in the vaccine he is telling me to inject my child with? When he doesn’t know how much aluminum is in the vaccine or how much is safe to inject? When he doesn’t know what Polysorbate 80 does to the BBB, or what happens when it is mixed with other toxins? When he tries to compare safety of ingestion to safety of injection? (I may be able to drink milk, but that doesn’t make it safe to inject it!) When the vaccine inserts say “…has not been evaluated for its carcinogenic or mutagenic potential or impairment of fertility.”? When I know more about vaccines than the doctor or nurse giving them, their opinion isn’t relevant.

Paralytic polio was suspected to be caused by a break in the soft tissue while suffering from flu like symptoms. This includes GIVING any form of injection including a vaccine.

According to the mayo clinic many people did not know they even had polio.

Newfoundland and Labrador has the highest vaccination rate in Canada. Our numbers actually meet herd immunity percentages. We also have the highest rate of cancer.

The chances of dying with polio in NL in 1959 was 1 in 22,500.

The chances of dying with cancer in NL in 2016 was 1 in 358. The chances of being diagnosed was 1 in 133.

An “iron lung” is a respirator. It helped people breathe when they couldn’t on their own. Since we have evolved we have many types of “iron lungs”. Puffers, sleep apnea machines, home oxygen, to name a few. Even an epi pen.

Vaccine manufacturers have stated on their actual vaccine inserts that vaccines are only studied for 42 days for adverse reactions. The vaccine is also ONLY studied against the SAME ingredients in the vaccine except the virus. This means it isn’t actually studied against an actual placebo.

The MMR and DPTP state ON the manufactuers insert that these have not been studied for safety with regards to being injected on the same day. It is assumed to be safe. But our medical system do give them on the same day to our 12 month olds.

The MMR has adverse reactions that include eating disorders. How many children have issues eating after they turn 1? Do you honestly think this is coincidental?

Our health system also does not follow a proper system to ensure they are following the severe adverse reactions. Children see a public health nurse, they end up in ER or at GP office and no one questions when they last had a vaccine. ANY change in a persons health that develops after a vaccine should be reported. ESPECIALLY if it is within the 42 days! If you took a Tylenol and got sick you would question the Tylenol. Why do we not question the aluminum, polysorbate 80, formaldehyde and so on in vaccines. Not to mention they contain adjuvants which come from food sources and those food sources are sprayed with Roundup and other chemicals. Therefore vaccines are contamined. Scientists have released numbers from when all the vaccines.

Do you think you could convince me to choose a possibility of getting cancer over getting polio with these numbers? The fact that no long term studies exist. Forget autism. I’m more worried about the number one thing killing most of our population. From our newborns to our elderly!!!!! And guess what they ALL have in common…..vaccines! Because they all come from different environments, different drinking waters, food sources, etc.

So by the process of elimination, the ONE thing all these people do have in common is vaccines.

Through my extensive research and my work throughout the years, I have discovered that vaccinations are causing impaired blood flow (ischemia) to brain and body from clinically silent to death. These are strokes – across the board for all of us. I have reason to believe that all are being affected and all vaccinations ARE causing the overwhelming rise in autism, specific learning disabilities, attention deficit disorders, sudden infant death, gulf war syndrome, dementia, seizure disorders, some cancers it would appear, and much much more.

“If I were to take the same schedule as my child is expected to get it would be the equivalent of me getting 400 vaccines over 18 months(120 separate injections plus the rotavirus doses)(male, 500 vaccines, around 150 separate injections plus the rotavirus doses). I believe that the more unconscionable action would be to subject my children to something I wouldn’t subject myself to.”

Would you take the entire infant scheduele adjusted to your body weight?

Vaccine Industry Placebo-Controlled Studies Are Nothing Less Than Criminal

Here’s proof that the vaccine industry CANNOT be trusted with your children’s lives: their safety studies don’t compare vaccines with a neutral placebo. The placebo they use contains the same ingredients suspected (known) to cause encephalitis and other health issues. So when the results are compared, the vaccine and placebo show the same results.

If they used a true placebo, the difference would be so dramatic that the vaccine industry would have to admit they’d been poisoning children for decades.

A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association has found an increase in cases of autism for babies born to mothers who received a flu vaccination in the first trimester, yet headlines elsewhere are reporting that no link was found.

“Encephalitis is inflammation of the brain that occurs when a virus directly infects the brain or when a virus, vaccine, or something else triggers inflammation. The spinal cord may also be involved, resulting in a disorder called encephalomyelitis.”

Encephalitis is the first step leading to autism. Correction: It’s the second step. The first step is vaccinating.

State Senator Kemp Hannon, Chair of the New York Senate Health Committee, and author of the recently passed law that will require all seventh and twelfth graders in the state to get meningitis shots, has been caught with his hand in the pot, according to the New York Daily News: specifically, the pharma pot. And to no small sum, mind you. His investments in pharmaceutical and health companies is at $100,000 while it is also being alleged that he has received more than $400,000 from the same interest groups. Hannon’s investments are a direct conflict of interest and he should be charged criminally. This is an act of using your position to influence and write laws for the sole result of personal gain.

VAccines have been declared, ‘unavoidably unsafe’ by the United States Supreme Court. This pronouncement is clear and unambiguous. If the individual components in a vaccine ( aluminum, mercury, formaldehyde, glyphosate, polysorbate 80, human and animal tissue, etc) are harmful, a vaccine which is the combination of these ingredients cannot be safe.

If you’re still vaccinating your kids, now would be a good time to stop.

Unvaccinated Children Have Much Lower Rates of Chronic Illness, Jackson State Study Finds
— Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

“The study suggests that fully vaccinated children may be trading the prevention of certain acute illnesses (measles, chicken pox, pertussis) for more chronic illnesses and neurodevelopmental disorders like ADHD and autism.”

Also, there has NEVER been a study that compared non-vaccinated population to fully, partially and single-vaccine vaccinated (except for this recent one: https://needtoknow.news/2017/05/first-ever-peer-reviewed-study-vaccinated-vs-unvaccinated-children-shows-vaccinated-kids-higher-rate-sickness-470-increase-autism/ ) Why oh why? Why ever could this be? Why are vaccine makers not liable for the poison they produce? Why do they only profit? Why are vaccines tested for “safety” for such a small window of time? Why are vaccines not held to the same standards as other drugs? Why is the vaccine market exploding? Why has VAERS paid out $3.5 billion dollars in compensation in the USA for killed/damaged human beings? (Compensation paid by the people,not the pharmaceuticals.) Why were the William Thomson documents destroyed (documents that showed a startling risk for autism in African American boys with the MMR vaccine)?

Dr. Wakefield has not been debunked. He was not anti-vax. He simply proposed a MMR non-combined vaccine. This was a threat to the vaccine industry. They went after him. Thus, doctors keep their mouths closed. Mercury is not safe in any amount, to inject into a body, let alone into a newborn. You know this.

Why are pregnant women not supposed to eat tuna (loaded with mercury), but they can supposedly safely be injected with it, plus numerous other toxins, diseased animal cells, aborted (dissective live) fetal cells, antibiotics, etc.etc.? There are a slew of thoughtfully made documentaries that have recently been released that address much of the fiction published in this piece. Also, many, many books, researched at the CDC, by highly educated people, such as doctors who had the ovaries/balls to step out and address the current holocaust, or the current vaccine schedule.

Beautiful load of propaganda, this piece. And yes, I’m one of those educated parents. Keep up the great work for the mighty pharmaceuticals! They’re the ones getting rich! Your children bear the toxic load and brain damage of this medical holocaust.

Would any of the authors of this piece buy a car from a company that offered absolutely no guarantee? Warrantee? Would you all want to buy a car from a company that had been proven to produce defective vehicles, but now you were required by law to buy a life-threatening car where the maker had absolutely no liability? No of course not! Would you force your mother, father, sister, friend, uncle, finance to buy a car that was from a crooked car dealer, where they would have no rights after the sale?

How much were you all paid to write this piece? How do you feel about your contribution to humanity? Would the authors of this piece voluntarily inject themselves with a “catchup” vaccine schedule (as they missed the 2017 vaccine schedule as it is currently proposed for kids)? Would you all drink formaldehyde, mercury, aborted fetal cells, mercury, aluminum, and the many, many other ingredients in a single vaccine? Would you INGEST it, or INJECT it? Please do so, then write a follow up piece sharing your results with the public.

The only entity who wins in the vaccine equation is the vaccine maker, the pharmaceuticals (who will be selling their drugs to a sick population for life), and the doctors, who receive their bonus. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry… and it’s growing! The children of planet earth are the ones who lose, and you three are not helping.

Why does 1 in 56 children now have autism? Better diagnosis? Please! Why do older people not have autism? Oh, they received 1-3 vaccines, not 50+! The USA has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world for a developed country. It also has the highest rate of vaccinations. It also is a country that promotes fear at every step. People are locked away in their sad little lives, listening to the TV, overwhelmed with the load of bull they daily have to process.

Have any of you actually read a vaccine insert? I suggest you do so immediately! It’s not too late to change the direction of your life’s work, Milne, Caulfield, Tepper. Grow a pair and start thinking for yourselves. Find a better way to make a living than prostituting yourselves out for an industry that does not give two f***ks about you. I dare you to go to whoever paid you to write this piece and ask for the study that shows vaccines are 100% safe. How fast do you think you’ll be out of a paycheck?

If you want to help people, then go for it. Earn your dollars from a non-pharmaceutical. Propose long, thorough studies on vaccines. Campaign to get dead babies, toxic metals, diseased animal cells, and the other sludge out of vaccines. Offer yourselves as test subjects if you must. And please, get a grip about your dream of a world dictatorship where three nitwits fantasize about no one having the legal right to their own body sovereignty! Unbelievable! Or better yet, channel your literary energies into futuristic romance novels with a vaccine slant. There is undoubtedly a market for it. It could start like this:

2020 Was HOT
“It was the year 2020. Franco had recently been fully vaccinated. He felt so hot. He loved to think about the nanoparticles of heavy metals adhered to his cells. In fact, he felt so hot he just had to have Celine, today. Celine, who had also recently been fully vaccinated, was, like Franco, allowed to go to school. Thus, they had both been educated.
Their attraction was strong. They would play doctor. Sometimes, Franco would pretend he was the one giving the vaccines. Other times, it was Celine. They really got off on this. Of course, they had both received the vaccine to protect against imagination, so they often just sat around playing doctor, over and over.
“Are you current on your vaccines?” Celine would whisper coyly. Franco would stare in his dead-eyed way at her, feeling things he did not know how to express. So he’d just look out the window. Sometimes a drop of saliva would drip out of his open mouth.
“Oh, there, there,” Celine would coo. (She had the same problem too, but not as badly.)
Sometimes a scientist would stop by their house and check to make sure they were playing doctor right. Because how could anyone know how to do anything without an industry expert to consult?”

How does Herd immunity work, if we vaccinate only kids? Kids are only % of the herd. Also, since most vaccines are not 100% effective.. Even if everyone gets vaccinated(includibg adults) do we have that Herd Immunity? What is the percent for Herd Immunity? (92%, 96%, or 98%)
Could anyone provide me information about study/studies ( all) that prove the existence of Herd immunity. I just want to see how we got these data

What the vaccine industry hasn’t taken into consideration is that parents are waking up to the harm that is being done to their children. Parents whose children have been permanently harmed or killed by vaccines are refusing to be coerced into subjecting their children to more vaccines. They are “mad as hell and not taking it anymore”.

These same parents are refusing to be intimidated into silence by a captured and compliant media. The chants of “correlation does not equal causation” mean little when your once healthy child is experiencing uncontrolled seizures or requires 24-hour care for the rest of his or her life.

The outcome of this grand uncontrolled experiment is not in doubt. The blind faith and unearned trust in the vaccine paradigm and its high priests will come to a sudden and dramatic end. The vaccine industry will collapse under the weight of its own fraud, immorality and callous disregard.

The only question is how many more children will be injured or die before the awareness is substantive enough to cause this teetering structure to fall.

The very first thing to do is realize that you are clueless about the actual science, are being spoonfed lies by media and uneducated doctors in bed with pharmaceutical corporations, and that you are poisoning your children with that toxic sludge as you spew your debunked nonsense.

Families alone hold all the risk and the responsibility in regard to vaccine injury. Everybody else goes to the bank. Parental concerns deserve to be listened to and respected. Parents of vaccine injured children are not ‘anti-vaxxers’ they are ‘ex-vaxxers’ and they will never deny their own personal experience. When it happens to you, the risk is 100%.

Informed consent is written into Canadian law and as such, the subject of vaccine safety is still an open conversation. Up to now, parents (as well as most medical personnel) were not educated enough to recognize the various signs of vaccine injury. This omission of risk is a serious lack of ‘vaccine awareness’.

In the present day climate of fear mongering, bullying and coercion regarding vaccines; our citizens personal health is being reduced to a one-size-fits-all check-list on a bureaucrat’s clip board. The term Anti-Vax is being used to describe essentially, anyone who gives themselves permission to make a decision; for themselves, for their children about anything on that checklist. To allude to Voltaire; why are we not allowed to criticise?

Where is the peer reviewed research that shows 90% of scientists agree that vaccines are safe ? Subtle spin is still spin. Which scientists does this actually refer too. How was this magic figure of 90 % derived ? Look below the surface of who pays for the research and who owns the media that does most of the scaremongering and cherry picking regarding ‘outbreaks’ . The full facts surrounding the outbreaks and the constantly moving ‘herd immunity’ myth that is purported to be fact are as unscientific as the ‘healthy smoking’ spin that the same marketing people used to use. How about you start researching the actual adverse reactions data and recent court cases and you may smell a change in this 90 percent of scientists agree that vaccines are safe rotting carcass.

I’m so sad that I had seizures all day after a vaccine when I was a baby. The doctors wouldn’t even see me to try to stop the seizures. They told my mom it was a normal reaction and she shouldn’t worry. Now as an adult I have to always have a caretaker and I can barely remember my years with my children. How can people act like it’s just so obvious we must somehow convince skeptics that vaccines are safe? How could you ever convince people like me? And there are no records of my case because they didn’t want there to be any so they wouldn’t even help me!

You won’t be posting this, because you’re not honest enough. You’re a bunch of ecopolitically motivated control freaks and you should be locked up.

VACCINES DISEASES IN SYRINGES, THEY ARE A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY AND SO ARE YOU. THEY CAUSE MORE DISEASE THAN THEY PREVENT.

1% to 3% antivaxxers? I’ve got news for you. That figure is rapidly growing and will continue to exponentiate. People are getting wiser. Eventually, you won’t be able to sell a vaccine to a mangy dog and it cannot happen soon enough.

Hi – the people who reject vaccines are the informed ones, who know the real truth and have taken the time to read the real research. Sadly the majority of people listen to the media and propaganda. This article is just another example of the pure ignorance regarding the subject of vaccines. Dr. Wakefield was absolutely dessimated and lost his licence for telling the truth. Here is a link to read about what the real truth regarding this courageous doctor:http://ahrp.org/laffaire-wakefield-shades-of-dreyfus-bmjs-descent-into-tabloid-science/

I am a retired RN and have seen how indocrinated the medical profession is re vaccines. I have asked pharmacists if they know what are in vaccines and many did not know. Unreal!! I have heard of nurses and doctors who also know the real truth about the dangers of vaccines, but are afraid to speak out because they may lose their licence. It is unreal how pharma has such a strong hold on society. We need to fight back and not give up, as our kids lives are at stake!!

Go to http://www.vaccinechoicecanada.com They have a huge amount of great information, along with many articles, studies videos, etc. It is a fantastic site. You can also become a member for $35 (optional) per year. It is the best $35 I have ever spent, as the information they provide is truly amazing.

OMG . Herd immunity really if you’re vaccinated and immune why would you be worried about unvaccinated children in the school system your article has opened my eyes to the corruption from within the government and medical system. And why is it we can get adjuvant free vaccinations for our pets but not for our children. Mandatory vaccinations is raising a big red flag for me saying there’s definitely something wrong with this. If you want to build trust you’re definitely going the wrong way about it anything that is mandated by the government or the medical system should be question with extreme scrutiny. This is more question of Rights and Freedoms then of Health and well-being thank you for opening my eyes to the tyranny of the vaccination industry.

This document is provided under the terms of a CreativeCommons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license. The terms of the license are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. Attributions are to be made to HealthyDebate.ca, a project under the direction of Dr. Andreas Laupacis, at the Keenan Research Centre, Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael’s Hospital.